Writing Feedback / The Sentinels [5]

They stand guard, no fear or cry. Only some purpose in their minds they know. Some things they look over, for were they to not, these may not be as before.

A wary band now become, their purpose to themselves better known; but they guard well, this wary band - what it is they do not know.

By stealthy glance, a whispered sound, a raised eyebrow, to other gestured; they hide their fears, of knowing not what they guard.

Some special knowledge, some past history, and conquests made of yore.

They see their enemies in the distance now, among trees and mists; silhouettes of steeds, brandishing swords and garbled shrieks.

A wily group these Sentinels, progenies of might and oppression.

On tromping steeds - let no one steal their freedom back, from them so hardily won.

Warfare is of another kind now, of words and disinformation; and deception too, and this has always been the same.

Writing Feedback / Vibhuti, as our camp was called! - A Spiritual Camp [6]

Coming here was an unexpectedly pleasant journey, driving into the midst of the hills around. So many idyllic village scenes on the way.

Vibhuti, as our camp was called, was larger than I had thought and driving up to where they were receiving the visitors, it struck me like a college campus -- and that too a very good one. I still think it is so like a large part of some high-end college campus in some developed nation.

Swamiji was standing and talking in a group with some people when we got there. He seemed very ordinary, although dressed in orange robes. Others prostrated or touched his feet; I did neither. If anything, to me he was at best like a professor in this place. I caught up with him again after we had deposited our luggage. He was checking out the lecture room and greeted me quite easily.

I wanted to establish a basis of how I would be comfortable communicating with him - and so I asked him directly, " What is the right attitude to have for someone who has more exposure to the Western mode of learning and study?" He asked me a little about myself and then said " Be patient! Patience is the right attitude."

That evening was the orientation and everyone was gathered facing the stage, where on five chairs, four swamis and a swamini were sitting. All were in orange attire and each had the look of a person quite learned in their subject. I felt glad this was not going to be some shallow program.

During what followed that evening, as well as the next day, I had the attitude only of understanding the meanings of the texts, as they were explained; hoping that somehow these were at the same level as my own understanding of Vedantic philosophy. Maybe, I would even be able to go beyond the understanding I had.

I felt a major shift in my idea about the Chinmaya Mission after a visit to Jeevan Darshan - a museum on swami Chinmaya's life. Here, I understood how the swamis at the mission, and those teaching us, are in fact, working at reviving the deeper aspects of Indian culture. That is, the spiritual message; and trying to tie together the numerous writings.

Quite as though they form the scaffolding holding in place the particular panorama, that we as students may experience the scene, and in the experiencing, more easily learn the things they hold out for us.

Though they want us to have an impression of the naturalness of the things they are teaching, they have in fact to struggle, firstly as any teacher does to help the student grasp the subject, but also to have an air that these things they are teaching are equally natural as the subjects we have become used to studying in colleges these days.

As we enter the third day of our camp - the routine is becoming easier. Getting up, getting ready, then coming out. The morning is only a little cold, but so pleasant. The colors in the sky and the freshness of the breeze, even the lingering darkness, invigorating.

I am beginning to understand that it is wrong to focus on understanding only in a scholarly way. It has to be more like following, as you are led, and you find you have no reason not to trust, wherever you are being led. The experience is not an unpleasant one, and actually you may not even be sure, if the questions which were first in your mind and you were seeking answers to in the discourses, were even the right ones, exactly the right ones.

Because you can tell this much, that you are somehow moving along even if it is only in a greater imperviousness you feel to your anxieties

Yesterday, I wanted to describe everything here as some kind of a theater. People just come together to enjoy something they 'wished' was true, and the teachers playing the bigger role in this make-believe drama of re-existing as if, in the ancient past, and all this, their version of it.

You can tell the command that each person who takes a class has over it, and the preparation they have done for it. At this time most of what they say seems hardly as one might read in the text itself. Yesterday, I felt in class that swamiji took every opportunity to say something in praise of swami Chinmaya, to the extent one begins to wonder what benefit is that to the listeners.

Today he was more clearly on some idea - though again, every word in the book, as though would trigger an anecdote from swami Chinmaya's life and his prowess. One side of the text we are reading, is the unquestioning acceptance of the Guru's qualities, and therefore, such praise may serve to exemplify the teacher's own attitude to his guru.

But harking back to the point of view of the real world, and it is not chaos as sometimes the suggestion seems to be. The real world works by real laws, if there are any of such, and anyone would benefit most from knowing more of those. This is why the listener may have some restraint in accepting ideas as they are told to us.

This is the message one begins to hear at all these talks -- a more and more elaborate description of life, our experience, and finally one experiencer within.

Ok - you want to say, almost in exasperation - do you, or do you not know how to overcome this illusion, for yourself and for me?

When this question has come into your mind, everything you hear sounds like so much effort to take you away from ever asking it - or their ever having to answer it.

Why put away this enquiry as a question of western science? We have come away from our business in the regular lives we lead - because when we ask this question there, we were told to free our minds first.

What if, the world is not actually so -- and this is the delusion that we Indians live through our lives. That there is no after life, and the practices we do are in no way responsible for any consequences -- such as 'offerings', chanting by rote, and specially the high praise to the Guru who is no more.

Would we not find it easier to accept some manifest act of the Guru not present, were something to happen, that we ask for? Why not some such small revelations, either the result of our own Sadhana here in Vibhuti, or by the grace of the swamis present, or of those who are in the world not visible to us!

As I see it, there are two very different ways in which the program here can move forward.

One, the expected one. That is, after another three days, very similar to the ones we have experienced, we go back to our lives. Happy in just this fact that we had a good holiday and are a little refreshed for the experience.

But there in another equally likely direction we can take; led all the more by what we are being taught in the lectures

Let me paint that scenario -- at this point, the swamijis can conduct some form of a test to pull out those who have the more developed thinking in these matters. That is, like in any program, it would be like choosing those for an advanced level of the course.

These students can be put through an even more intensive routine - thereby refining those qualities in which they were already advanced. For example, it could be a few hours of guided meditation, along one of the techniques being taught to us in the mornings. The other facet of it could be a more elaborate and 'complete' yagna, something we can expect the acharyas to know better about.

Having prepared the chosen sadhakas in this fashion, and doing a specific yagna towards a specific and recognizable outcome, and finally, were they to attain that, how enriching an experience for all who witness it; strengthening their bonds to the teachings of our culture and the cause of the Chinmaya mission.

We all who are returning to our previous lives expect this, that had we given ourselves to a longer study and perhaps done more 'yagnas' we would have benefited more. And it is the reason for our returning the next time.

This idea can come to anyone of us at some time later, and will make us wonder why was it not done in this way. Any benefit that we may have had from the program as it is presently designed will be offset by the doubts which may come thereafter.

It is easier to decide how the group can be chosen, probably also in general terms, what exactly makes it a fast track. The point of interest is, that those on that track will reach a point much farther ahead than we who stay on the normal one. The question is how do we objectively determine that they have indeed gone on further than we are.

The idea I am trying to communicate is this. The end goal for us is to understand ourselves as one experiencer. Everything else is illusionary, that is, it has come together as a result of a complex interplay of the basic elements, the Maha Bhutas and the various limbs of the mind.

therefore, if this really be the case, Indian philosophy suggests using some techniques, like a gardener would use his shears, to cut ourselves out of this entire ensnaring thing, called Maya.

The more energetically we do this, naturally the results will be. In this same example of ourselves being trapped under vines, if someone could point to us which limbs we cut so that many others fall away on their own, the outcome will be more, in the sense of a freedom from the entrapment of the vines of Maya.

All of us here believe in the truth of this process, and we may think of our present time here, as a sort of a break, as when we meet with some 'master gardeners', who understand the growth of this plant well, and are trying to explain that to us.

Whatever charts, diagrams or replicas they use to explain the growth of this plant will only be a theoretical knowledge. They will also tell us how to better use the shears, what kinds of shears to use etc..

But this much seems certain that nothing we do here is itself going to 'sort out' the lives we regularly live.

And this is how we understand the picture. But that is because we are leaving out something crucial from it -- the very element whose existence has to be validated.

The metaphysics of Indian philosophy - Samkhya, says that one facet of whatever we consider as our problem in the real world, is actually in our own nature. So in that sense we have carried it to the camp. This is how the large scale structure of Maya works.

I think it very worth the while to check out if this really is the way they say. And I would be very willing to invest more effort to solving my real world problems in this way.

One may still think of this as only some learning, as a curing of our psychology, and we have yet to go and apply ourselves in the 'correct' way to solve our present difficulty.

But no! You do not have to do anything at all. The problem will dissolve and you will either get news of that even while you are here, or simply go back and find that it is so.

This is how I understand the teachings here.

Tomorrow is the last day of the camp. Like every other person here, and like it must happen when people get together for a period of time, a sadness comes on at the thought of parting.

I look closely at my own feelings and see there, not just a sadness but also discontent. I remember clearly I had come here with definite expectations of changes which might occur in me and my circumstances. Is it that everyone is going back with some disappointment? Of course everyone expects their lives to be miraculously rescued from whatever troubles they are in. As they immersed themselves in the camp here they must have hoped that their evolution will be speeded up -- that whoever they look up to as taking care of them, would pay more attention to their needs now, because they are so focused on him here.

Now as they turn to their own lives they cannot help but feel that their hopes were for more to have happened.

In being honest about my own thoughts, and it may seem as this to anyone else here as well - did we not go deep enough from a fear that we may be forced to conclude that the process does not work? That it is all in fact, not true?

We all immediately rebel at this suggestion. We have all had some small miracles in our lives which have gradually developed a strong foundation of faith over the years.

So why do we not feel ready to experience a similar miracle now? Because what will happen is exactly that, a miracle. And since we make it, we would be Yogis.

Writing Feedback / An Indian milieu [12]

The change coming over the world at present is the common drift towards understanding ' how things work '. This is the heart of Western thinking. Nothing wrong about this, but it does not address the question 'who are we ', closely linked to the 'fact' of our impermanant human existence. Perhaps it is necessary to not ignore either, because when we do not pay attention to ' how things work ', we could go to an extreme of not concerning ourselves at all with our own conditions, nor of those depending upon us. Questions such as 'who are we ' have a very different meaning when a Western person asks it, than as an Easterner would. The Indian has in a sense, the quest of his Self made easy by having this path laid out for him in easily identifiable books. His task is to see how he measures up to those ideas.

We are a strange mix. We are neither purely Indian nor Western. We are instead Indians influenced by Western thinking. So how Indian are we and how American, or English ? We will not want our country's culture to be denied a place in the world, but are not so sure about our philosophy. In India our culture has grown upon our philosophy, and it is that which later came to be called Spirituality. The distinctions as we make them now, may not have existed before a point in time. And how deep did this Western influence go? There is still a part in us it did not touch, because that is a space which does not even exist in the western mind. In ours it was tilled and planted, but did not thrive.

People turn away from spirituality when they find some conflict in it with a common sense approach to life. Or they accept it as relevant but seperate. Yet, in the past of India, knowledge of the world and ourself was continous. As we accepted another approach, we unwittingly gave up fundamentals expressed only in our native languages. 'Were they so relevant?' you ask, and when you try reaching for those ideas, they slip from your grasp.

I am drifting into another world and I don't wish to do more than keep describing it. The world is none other than the one from our ancient past and you might challenge if I actually have a better sense of it as I claim. As I see it, you probably have a very strong sense of it yourself, but do not say it out loud - so we can go with my attempt to describe how I am seeing and understanding , you can agree or just shake your head. Like I said earlier, it is simpler for us as Indians, this exploration of 'who we are', though some ask, why is this such an exalted question? Could there not be other more pertinent ones, 'what's our purpose here in this life?' or, 'what can we do to make it better?'

Imagine that if we're flowing down a stream, we have one picture of the things we see. Next when we stand aside on the bank, we see the stream flowing by and our own little boat, that we were in, also drifting along. The boat is our body including all its abilities, with its senses, but for now we'll seperate out other functions we otherwise attribute to it, primarily of thinking. Question is, what is the bank here? What is that stable ground that does not itself flow, and that we may perch ourselves upon.

You've heard this from others before, likely even read on this subject I am writing about, and I admit, I am daunted by your cynicism. You might be sitting there in judgement and I ask myself, why am I trying to speak with you? And this is the answer I get. That, provided I am convinced in the integrity of whatever I say here, and even then you hold back, then thats for reasons of your own. So this is where we are, in our boat, about to step off and wade up to the bank. We've been sitting in the boat so long, a little helpless because we are controlled, to some extent atleast, by the current. Oh yes, we can do something ourselves to make the boat move around a bit, but essentially we're accepting the nature of the things we find ourselves in.

Are you beginning to see what I am trying to do? I am saying that this analogy of ourselves in a boat, the river and the bank covers the three entities pretty well of ourselves, our world and that eternal, permanant truth we may wish to go over to. The good thing is that even when we go over to the bank, we will be able to see our boat and can even walk along. There are other boats tied to yours, those of your family and dependents and everything moves along. Boats get old and break apart and sink, and you know thats going to be the fate of your boat eventually. So you want to come over to the dry land before that happens and you wish that for everyone you want to see safe.

I will go over something of which, I was atleast a little confused. I hope it brings clarity to you as well. I said we were going to step out of our boat and wade up to the shore. The boat is our body and its senses. We try and reach through the water, represented in our analogy as the world. We're going to shut our senses, by sitting down and closing our eyes and disregarding inputs such as sounds, any conciousness we have of smells or lingering of tastes and sensations of contact. All of this is represented as the boat for us. Now having done this, we are aware of the world still. It isn't just a memory of the things around which persists in our minds, it is something more definite.

The pressure you feel as you try to maintain this composure of observation, are currents, consequences of actions you've done, and will probably push you in the direction you want to go. My attempt, if I were you, would be to deal with them in a manner which causes the least ripples, because now I am interested in seeing down to the bed of the river.

So as I peer over the side of my boat, attempting to see into the waters, to the river bed. I sit in silence and ignoring my senses, try to 'see' what else I may. You wonder how much may you discover by closing your eyes and looking only within. But, hopefully you are able to recognize that as you close your eyes, move towards a point within, you sharpen your intensity to observe, and everything is outside.

Let me say it again that it helps me a lot to know someone is following along ---

You've may have read of this before - and wonder what can affect your thoughts now that all else before hasn't. Reality isn't about hard objects and scientific facts alone. Things we sense, like seeing, touching, tend to cloud our 'seeing' other real things. Consider just the physical presence of things, how significant are they to your life? No more than the music you might hear playing at some corner as you walk by.What is then significant? Events of your life, and those you exercise influence upon.

The reading of this passage will be followed by another from amongst those you chose. After that, anything 'you bring into reality', itself pressed upon you that it be done. Looking at things not as they appear but as a playing out, we understand why statistics and the likelihood of events is an averaging, ignoring this continuum of the individual and his unique events.

Tell me this much ... I hope reading this is coming down as positive for you and not otherwise?

Time and again I've looked at the philosophical issue from one particular point of view, I think because it comes naturally. We make an effort to 'understand' by moving away from ourselves, but in that unconscious action we intrinsically accept our senses as the 'given' and an objective basis of our observations. What is understanding, but a looking at, and grasping, within our mind? When we close our eyes, we prefer to take the blackness as real, putting a veil over all else we are connected to in the world.

Indian philosophy says we should be aware of four layers in any experience, each subtler than the one before and providing the basis for it. The world persists whether we want it to or not, because finally, we are the only ones experiencing our existence, and our experience is inescapable. When it is over with, the next experience takes our life on a different path.

These layers are described as : specific - general - indicative - conceptual. This is the sum total of everything we experience, whatever the sense we make of them.

So at any time, you can look upon your world, and think of it as some spherical 3-dimensional globe constructed just for you, and around you. The components of your experience, the pain, the pleasantness, though varying, is brought up for you, much like the medication the pharmacist mixes for you.This becomes easier to understand when we can bring ourselves to one single point, the one we think of as ourselves. The nature of our bodies, its condition is part of the prescription. All its travails were as prescribed.At the next level are the circumstances. They have a certain sense of being just so for us. And as much as we can, we move them on, and it feels for the better mostly.

Our bodies and our circumstances encompass the four levels of our experience. The prescribed one.The world is, down to its objective content, experienced at the finest level as 'concept'. We do not come to know this world through our senses alone, but if defective, the input is affected and only as much as we come to know, 'came through'.

Writing Feedback / A licence to Write ? [11]

Something troubles me deeply about this place...

Yet, it isn't just troubles that one tries to get a handle on. Or sometimes maybe, only so one may move them away, or circumvent them. We try instead to reach for something positive, something which has enlivened our minds at times before, something within ourself that has often less to do with where we physically are. And this too, we may find sometimes, not so easy to grasp. It is then when we may begin to wonder if, after all, it does have something to do with where we are now, the environment.

Environment can affect us, our minds, our mood, its state of happiness, of being creative in ways we may not be aware of.

What do we do then. Build a little cocoon, to shield ourselves from it all? Doesn't work too well does it? We need, at least, during the time leading upto when we will do our creative work, be taking in something from the surrounding. We pause in our writing, or putting brush-strokes, and look over our easel, or the laptop screen. Some things there feed our minds, or distract them, or just disturb us.

Ah "mind", such an intangible entity, so much a part of us yet seems as though not to belong to us entirely. Like some mistress you want to please, you give it objects of beauty to look upon. You give it sensual pleasure to lull it out of its torpor, wafts of coffee, even the scents of green, of an abundance of grass and trees, of cool oxygen air, of blue skies, of shimmering lakes and the sight of sea perhaps, if you are fortunate and can see that from where you sit.

Or like your mistress again, you will tell her make believe stories, where you paint pictures of adventures and galloping steeds. Of mountains beyond the mists, and sweeping giant birds; damsels in distress, and of valour. Of chest full of treasure, golden coins, of diving off from boats into deep waters, swimming amongst porpoises and glimmering schools of exotica; of underwater ferns and landscaped ocean beds, strange dangers from sting rays and hammer heads or the occasional octopii.

You've cajoled your mind enough now. Shut away the concrete and dust of these ugly buildings that sap it of its life, its livliness. You want to lead it to another place. Has it been resisting you? So weary perhaps, unwilling to come together, make an effort. Ah mind, I never knew my life was nothing, nothing without you.

We're beginnig to roll along a bit now. Something I've been noticing, somewhere deep inside of me, in the oceanbed within. It has glanced by, this, like some glistening golden thing. You know, you of English heritage, I really think, the language doesn't at all belong to you. And this inspite of your occasional Shakespearean quotes, or how you shake your poetic knowledge like some burly guard his spear as though to scare away those looking upon.

Language reaches in, in many layers, of outer and inner contexts. These last, is where I am of a different genre -- and I wonder how can you even judge that in me. As surely as you cannot tell sitting in a car, whether you are passing over gravel or wooden chips. How silly to say, the wooden chips do not feel like stones.. they do .. to anyone who did not know better.

that last bump... did it feel like in English, or in Hindi?